| Trump rages at Democrats over vote on war powers at Ohio rally Posted: 09 Jan 2020 06:01 PM PST  President Trump went after his Democratic critics at a raucous campaign rally hours after the House of Representatives passed a resolution that sought to limit his ability to wage war in Iran.
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| 'If you're told to leave, you must leave': mass evacuations as Australia's bushfires intensify Posted: 09 Jan 2020 07:13 AM PST  Australian authorities urged another mass evacuation across the heavily populated southeast on Thursday as a return of hot weather fanned huge bushfires threatening several towns and communities. Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews urged communities to be on alert ahead of the extreme conditions. "If you receive instructions to leave, then you must leave," Andrews said in a televised briefing. "That is the only way to guarantee your safety." Parts of Kangaroo Island, a wildlife-rich tourist spot off the southeast coast where Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Wednesday made a plea for foreign tourists not to be deterred by the fires, were again evacuated on Thursday. "I urge everyone to heed warnings, follow advice, and to head to the east part of the island, which is deemed safe at this point," South Australia Fire Chief Mark Jones said in a separate briefing in Adelaide. A third of the island has been destroyed. Twenty-seven people have been killed this fire season, according to the federal government, as the monster fires have scorched through more than 10.3 million hectares (25.5 million acres) of land, an area the size of South Korea. Thousands have been made homeless and thousands have had to evacuate repeatedly because of the volatility of the fires. Read more | Australia's bushfire crisis A huge blaze has also now begun threatening Perth, in western Australia, with emergency warnings issued in several suburbs as the fire moved toward them with frightening speed. A thick smoke cloud hung over most of the city late in the afternoon, while residents in Mardella, Hopeland, Wellard, Casuarina and Oldbury were told to leave their home if they have a safe escape route, and otherwise to stay indoors and shelter in a room with two exits and a water supply. The fire burnt 1,000 hectares in its first four hours, and authorities warned it is out of control and highly unpredictable. Australia bushfires | Tell us your story Also in Western Australia, hopes to get stranded travellers across the only sealed road that connects the state to South Australia were dashed Thursday when the fires blocking the Eyre Highway got worse. People have been stranded on the Nullabor, on both sides of the state border, trying to get home for several days, relying in part on local truck stops for vital supplies. Also on Thursday, the Australian Academy of Science released a video summarising the impacts of the crisis on Australia's native wildlife. It is now believed one billion animals have been killed, and many species lost forever. New South Wales fire fighters said more than 2,600 homes have been incinerated or badly damaged this fire season, including 1,870 destroyed. On the same day, the state government announced a $1billion (£530,000,000) fund for reconstruction efforts. The commitment comes on top of more than $200 million already committed by the State, and a $2billion national fund provided by the Federal Government. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the state funds would be used for infrastructure, while the Federal relief money would go directly to people. Australia fires gallery Mining billionaire Andrew Forrest also pledged $70million (£36,820,000) for fire relief and reconstruction. Mr Forrest did, however, receive some criticism for blaming the majority of the fires on arson, when police and fire authorities in all affected states have made clear that is not the case. It emerged this week that the Bureau of Meteorology found 2019 was the hottest and driest year ever recorded in Australia. Prime Minister Scott Morrison's problematic handling of the crisis continued on Thursday too, when he said "thankfully we have had no loss of life" on Kangaroo Island while visiting an area where a father and son had been killed by the blaze. When he was quickly corrected, he said: "Yes two, that's quite right. I was thinking about firefighters firstly."
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| Missing journalist's body found in Mexico's Michoacan state Posted: 09 Jan 2020 07:34 AM PST |
| A mysterious pneumonia outbreak is causing panic in China, and it appears to be related to SARS Posted: 10 Jan 2020 08:26 AM PST  The outbreak has been traced to a seafood market in the central city of Wuhan, China. Nearby countries are responding with health warnings.
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| Nobel laureate Paul Krugman said he likely fell for a phishing scam. Here's how phishing scams work and how to avoid them. Posted: 09 Jan 2020 07:56 AM PST  Krugman tweeted that he received a phone call indicating that hackers downloaded child pornography on his WiFi network.
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| Ocasio-Cortez Refuses to Pay DCCC Dues, Frustrating House Dems Posted: 10 Jan 2020 10:58 AM PST  Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has exasperated her fellow House Democrats by announcing that she will not pay dues to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which works to elect Democrats to the House."For me personally, I'm not paying D-trip dues" for a "myriad of reasons" the freshman progressive congresswoman from New York said, using a nickname for the DCCC.According to records, she has so far not paid her $250,000 in dues despite leveraging her massive social media following to raise millions for her own reelection, Fox News reported.Ocasio-Cortez said her gripe with the party's official House campaign organization relates to the DCCC's practice of not supporting newer progressive candidates in order to insulate incumbent Democrats."One, I don't agree with the policy around blacklisting groups that help progressive candidates," she said. "I think we need to evolve as a party and make room for that.""I want to help frontline members by putting that money straight into their pocket," Ocasio-Cortez explained.The progressive 30-year-old has made good on that promise, pulling in more than $300,000 last year for candidates of her choosing, including $18,000 for Marie Newman, who seeks to oust longtime Illinois congressman Dan Lipinski, a rare pro-life Democrat."To have people try to purify the caucus because they don't agree with them – 100 percent, I certainly don't agree with that," said Texas Representative Henry Cuellar, one of the Democrats Ocasio-Cortez is trying to replace with a more progressive candidate, in this case Jessica Cisneros, for whom she raised $35,000."Hopefully, we will start to get away from this circular firing squad," Cuellar said.Ocasio-Cortez complained earlier this week that the Congressional Progressive Caucus's standard for lawmakers is too low, saying, "They let anybody who the cat dragged in call themselves a progressive."DCCC Chairwoman Cheri Bustos highlighted the party campaign arm's strong fundraising numbers even without Ocasio-Cortez's contribution."That's always up to individual members so I guess I don't think about it one way or another," Bustos said of Ocasio-Cortez's decision to withhold dues. "We're raising record amounts of money from our members."
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| Modi is resurrecting the most horrifying episode of his career to crush dissent Posted: 10 Jan 2020 06:12 AM PST  When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised to bring his Gujarat Model to the rest of the country, everyone thought he meant the pro-growth reforms that had allegedly done wonders for the economy of his home state. But the events of last week suggest that the real Gujarat Model that Modi had in mind was something else entirely: Government looking the other way as private militants violently attack disfavored groups. It's a model that infamously resulted in the slaughter of more than 1,000 men, women, and children, mostly Muslims, over the course of a few days in 2002 when Modi was its chief minister.And now Modi has done a mini re-enactment at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), a prestigious college in the heart of New Delhi whose opposition has long irritated him. This is no doubt a warning shot to the growing youth resistance against his "papers, please" citizenship law.Here's what happened at JNU:Sunday evening, 40 to 50 hoodlums, mostly men but also a few women, faces partially wrapped in scarfs, armed with clubs, iron rods, and sledgehammers, stormed the campus. Eyewitness accounts and video footage suggest that several of these people were members of the ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad), a student union associated with Modi's party. They approached a group of students protesting a sudden, massive fee hike and began thrashing them. They bloodied the student president, Aishe Ghosh, and many others.Then, chanting that the students were traitors who deserve to be shot for opposing the administration, the attackers barged into dorm rooms and went on a rampage, taking care to spare rooms that sported ABVP posters. Muslim students were of course fair game. And so was a blind Hindu student, a Sanskrit scholar and a student of Hinduism no less, whose wall sported a picture of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, India's reformist founding father. (Ambedkar has fallen from grace in pro-Modi circles because he was a vigorous opponent of the caste system and other regressive Hindu practices and his thought is fueling the constitutional case against Modi's Hindu nationalism.)JNU's vice-chancellor, who is appointed by the central government, failed to mobilize campus security to stop the mayhem. Meanwhile, the Delhi police, which is under the command of the Modi government rather than local authorities, ignored the frantic calls of students for over an hour. There was a veritable battalion of cops standing right outside the campus gates, but not a single one of them went in to stop the attack. As if this is not shocking enough, the cops even stood by as ambulances were vandalized right in front of them.Modi hasn't said a word condemning the violence at JNU. No assailant has yet been charged or arrested. The police claim they're zeroing in on some suspects, but judging by how they have handled cow vigilantes lynching Muslims suspected of consuming beef, the culprits will face no more than a slap on the wrist.Incredibly, at the exact same time that the JNU students were getting bashed, the cops were preparing a rap sheet against some of them, including Ghosh, for allegedly vandalizing university computer servers the day before to stop students from registering. Ghosh denies that allegation. Meanwhile, a video that ABVP circulated — and no less than the vice chancellor retweeted — showing that the Sunday violence was triggered by a prior episode when a "lefty student" punched an ABVP member turned out to be the opposite: an ABVP supporter appears to be attacking a "lefty student."All of this — law enforcement standing by as private militants allied with the ruling party go on a violent spree, criminalizing the victims, spreading disinformation to confuse the public — was precisely Modi's modus operandi in Gujarat. But the ominous parallels with that grisly episode don't stop there.The Gujarat carnage was preceded by a long vilification campaign against Muslims, a strategy he is replicating in miniature against the university. Modi has long castigated JNU students and faculty as communists and traitors who want to break up the country — never mind that last year's Nobel Prize recipient in economics along with two of Modi's own cabinet ministers hail from the university. His Home Minister and right-hand man, Amit Shah, known for his brass knuckles politics, has repeatedly said the university's "tukde tukde gang" — meaning the gang that wants to dismember India piece by piece — needs to be "taught a lesson." Modi popularized this moniker a few years ago when some of JNU's firebrand student leaders harshly protested the abrupt hanging of a Muslim man who had allegedly attacked the Indian parliament.Such statements signaled to Modi and Shah's most extreme supporters that they wanted the university targeted, without having to bother with actually giving orders to law enforcement authorities.Not that the duo is shy about doing so when necessary.A few weeks ago, cops appeared to vandalize Jamia Millia University, a Muslim university in New Delhi. But Modi's comrade, Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, went even further. His police showed up at Aligarh Muslim University and roughed up students protesting Modi's faith-cleansing policies that'll strip an untold number of Indian Muslims of citizenship. Over 60 students were injured, three critically. Several students have just disappeared. A Muslim female journalist who was covering a protest in nearby Lucknow was arrested and allegedly assaulted by police.But such tactics are backfiring spectacularly. The anti-government protests, especially on college campuses, are spreading like wildfire. Students at many elite colleges have gone on strike and are holding candle light vigils to protest the events at JNU and AMU along with Modi's nefarious citizenship law.A normal politician would back off in the face of such public opposition and extend an olive branch, especially given how quickly Modi's carefully cultivated squeaky-clean image is getting trashed in India and abroad. But Modi and Shah are doubling down.Previously, they had dubbed secularists defending religious freedom as "Muslim appeasers." Now, even moderate free-market conservatives or middle-of-the-road liberals expressing concern over the direction of the country are being branded as the radical left, Madhvan Narayanan, a veteran Indian journalist, told The Week.Why is Modi doing this? What's his end game?Many fear he is deliberately baiting protesters and fomenting widespread unrest to build an excuse to cancel elections in Delhi next month and put the city under the president's rule. His party is expected to lose handily just as it has done in other state elections in recent months, thanks to the growing dismay over his assaults on citizenship. There is even speculation that he is preparing to suspend India's constitution and declare an emergency, just as Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi notoriously did in 1975.That may or may not be the case. But one open question about Modi always has been whether he was pushing an extreme Hindu nationalist agenda to gain power or vice versa: pursuing power to push his agenda. His growing enemies list — and the private and state violence he will apparently deploy against those on it — suggests that the former might be the case.This means no one outside of Modi's band of merry brothers is safe in India anymore. All of India is Gujarat now. Dissent is out. Violence is in.As one poster at a protest noted: "First AMU. Then JNU. Next You."Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.More stories from theweek.com Trump reportedly admitted impeachment played a big role in his Soleimani decision Rush's Neil Peart dies at age 67 Donald Trump is behaving like the guiltiest man alive
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| Does the impeachment trial need witnesses? Posted: 09 Jan 2020 07:33 AM PST  Lawmakers from both side of the aisle have been fighting over whether the Senate impeachment trial will include new witnesses. Can it be considered a true trial without their testimony?
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| Iran is using bulldozers at the Ukrainian plane crash site, which could make it impossible to prove what happened Posted: 10 Jan 2020 06:50 AM PST  Experts fear that moving pieces of debris could effectively destroy evidence. Iran has also been reluctant to share the plane's flight recorders.
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| Canada prosecutor says essence of Huawei CFO case is fraud Posted: 10 Jan 2020 04:17 PM PST  Canada's Department of Justice said Friday the allegation against a top Chinese executive arrested at the United States' request would be a crime in Canada and she should be extradited to the United States on fraud charges. Canada arrested Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of Huawei's founder, in Dec. 2018 in a case that sparked a diplomatic furor among the three countries and complicated high-stakes U.S.-China trade talks. China detained two Canadians in apparent retaliation for the arrest Meng.
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| Pentagon: 'aggressive' Russian naval ship nearly caused Arabian Sea collision Posted: 10 Jan 2020 03:17 PM PST  The Pentagon accused the Russian navy on Friday of aggressive actions in the Arabian Sea after one of its ships very nearly collided with a US Navy destroyer. The Russian ship ignored collision warning blasts from the USS Farragut and came extremely close before turning away, narrowly averting a crash on Thursday, said the US Navy 5th Fleet, which released video footage of the incident. "While the Russian ship took action, the initial delay in complying with international rules while it was making an aggressive approach increased the risk of collision," the fleet said in a statement.
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| Thousands flee beach towns after prime minister proclaims Australia 'wonderful place to come' Posted: 09 Jan 2020 07:52 AM PST  Hot, windy weather swept back into southeastern Australia on Thursday, whipping historic bushfires and prompting evacuation of several coastal towns.
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| North Korea's Underground Bunkers And Bases Are A Nightmare For America Posted: 10 Jan 2020 03:31 AM PST  What lies within them?
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| U.S. rebuffs Britain's extradition request for diplomat's wife after fatal crash Posted: 10 Jan 2020 12:57 PM PST  WASHINGTON/LONDON (Reuters) - The United States on Friday rejected a formal request from Britain for the extradition of a U.S. diplomat's wife who left the country last year after a road collision that killed 19-year-old Briton Harry Dunn. British prosecutors are seeking the extradition of Anne Sacoolas over the crash last August in which Dunn was killed while riding his motorbike. "Following the Crown Prosecution Service's charging decision, the Home Office has sent an extradition request to the United States for Anne Sacoolas on charges of causing death by dangerous driving," a UK Home Office spokesman said in a statement on Friday.
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| Poll: 55 percent of Americans think Trump killing Soleimani made the U.S. less safe Posted: 09 Jan 2020 07:39 AM PST  A majority of Americans don't seem to be buying the Trump administration's rationale for killing Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleiman, according to a new poll.In a USA TODAY/Ipsos poll released Thursday, 55 percent of U.S. adults said the United States' recent drone strike that killed Soleimani and its immediate aftermath made the country less safe.The administration has contended the opposite in the days since the strike. Vice President Mike Pence, for example, told Today in an interview Thursday that "America is safer" as a result of Trump's decision.But only 24 percent of Americans in this poll said the strike made the country safer, and almost a third of Republicans said the strike made the U.S. less safe. Even so, 42 percent of Americans still supported the Soleimani strike, while 33 percent opposed it and 25 percent didn't know what to think about it.Fifty-two percent of those surveyed also described Trump's behavior with Iran as "reckless," while 62 percent said the strike that killed Soleimani made it more likely that the United States and Iran will go to war. Forty-seven percent said they believe Trump authorized the bombing to distract from impeachment.USA Today's poll was taken by surveying 1,005 adults online on Jan. 7 and Jan. 8, and it was completed prior to Trump's recent address. The margin of error is 3.5 percentage points. Read the full results at USA Today.More stories from theweek.com Trump reportedly admitted impeachment played a big role in his Soleimani decision Donald Trump is behaving like the guiltiest man alive Marianne Williamson drops out of the 2020 race
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| Police, villagers clash over land in Vietnam, leaving 4 dead Posted: 09 Jan 2020 01:35 PM PST  Residents of a Hanoi suburb used grenades, firebombs and spears Thursday in an attempt to stop soldiers from building a wall around a military airport on land they say is private, leaving three police and a villager dead, officials said.
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| Trump suggests he'd invoke executive privilege to block Bolton testimony Posted: 10 Jan 2020 01:47 PM PST |
| All the Insane Surveillance Tools the Government (Maybe) Has Posted: 10 Jan 2020 11:44 AM PST |
| India's road-block women vow to fight on against citizenship law Posted: 10 Jan 2020 05:24 PM PST  Every night, 75-year-old Noornissa braves the freezing cold to help block one of the main roads into the capital of India, in a protest that is at the forefront of a rising challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. For nearly four weeks, Noornissa and more than 200 other women have sat and slept across the four-lane road between Delhi and the satellite city Noida, gaining nationwide attention as protests erupted across India over a controversial citizenship law that critics say is anti-Muslim. Men stand guard as the women, from the mainly Muslim area of Shaheen Bagh, sing the US civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome" and chant against the Citizenship Amendment Act, passed last month by Modi's Hindu nationalist government.
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| Iranian accused in 1994 Argentina bombing steps into debate Posted: 10 Jan 2020 10:41 AM PST |
| U.S. Army plans to expand Asian security efforts to counter China Posted: 09 Jan 2020 11:16 PM PST  The U.S. Army plans to deploy two specialized task forces to the Pacific capable of conducting information, electronic, cyber and missile operations against Beijing, a Pentagon official said on Friday. The task forces were slated to deploy over the next two years, U.S. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said at an event https://brook.gs/39VM3fS in Washington. The units, called Multi-Domain Task Forces, would help neutralize some capabilities China and Russia already possess.
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| Mexico: two killed after 11-year-old opens fire at school Posted: 10 Jan 2020 08:44 AM PST  * Five children and teacher also injured, police chief says * Torreón mayor: 'It is very serious, so, so sad'At least two people have been killed and six injured after an 11-year-old boy entered a school in northern Mexico with two handguns and opened fire.The shooting took place on Friday morning in the city of Torreón, in Coahuila state.One of the dead was reportedly a female teacher, with some reports suggesting she had been the shooter's target. The other was the shooter, who police said had killed himself.A graphic photograph published by Mexican news outlets showed what appeared to be the body of a young boy splayed out in a pool of blood, with a handgun lying on the ground.Police chief Maurilio Ochoa told reporters six people had been wounded – five schoolchildren and a teacher – with two in a "delicate" condition in hospital.Ochoa said the shooter was believed to have entered his school with two weapons: a small-calibre handgun and a high-calibre weapon. The boy's parents and grandmother, with whom he lived, had said they had no idea how he acquired the guns."This is really regrettable," Ochoa said, as anxious parents gathered outside the school's entrance. He suggested backpack searches might be needed to prevent future tragedies.Torreón's mayor, Jorge Zermeño, told reporters the causes of the attack were still unclear."They tell me he was a boy who had very good grades, who lives – lived – with his grandmother and who certainly suffered some kind of family problem." He added: "It is very serious, so, so sad, and lamentable to see a primary school student do something like this."In an interview with the Mexican news channel Milenio TV, Zermeño called the shooting an "atypical situation" that did not speak to the "peaceful society" that was Torreón. "This is a city that likes to work and likes to live in peace," he said.Coahuila state's governor, Miguel Ángel Riquelme, told reporters there were suspicions the shooter had been influenced by a video game called Natural Selection.Before carrying out the shooting the boy – who has not been identified – reputedly told classmates: "Today is the day."Despite suffering some of the world's highest murder rates, school shootings of the kind that blight the US remain relatively rare in Latin America.In March last year eight students were gunned down in the city of Suzano in Brazil's São Paulo state.In 2011 a similar attack at a school in Rio de Janeiro claimed 12 lives.One of the worst such attacks to take place in Mexico came in 2017 when a 15-year-old student killed himself after shooting four people at a school in the state of Nuevo León.Mexico's leftist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is battling a major drug-fuelled security crisis which saw more than 31,000 people murdered last year alone.This year looks like being no less bloody: 41 people were murdered in the city of Tijuana in the first eight days of 2020 and more than 100 have died in Guanajuato state, according to local media reports.
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| Spy scandal rocks Taiwan ahead of weekend elections Posted: 09 Jan 2020 06:27 AM PST  Allegations in the Australian media that a Chinese spy was pressured to smear the Taiwanese ruling party with bribery charges has prompted accusations of meddling in the Taiwanese election. The island of 23 million is already on high alert for any signs of Chinese interference in its presidential and legislative polls on Saturday, amid mounting fears of targeted disinformation campaigns to undermine Tsai Ing-wen, the incumbent president who Beijing deeply mistrusts. China denies trying to do so. In the latest allegations of dirty tricks, reported in The Age, Wang Liqiang, a self-confessed Chinese intelligence operative seeking to defect to Australia, was warned in December that he could be sent back to China and killed if he did not publicly recant his story. In November, Mr Wang sparked an international furore by claiming that he had worked for a Beijing-directed operation to target independence and democracy movements in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and to promote Communist Party influence. Beijing immediately dismissed his story and said he was a convicted criminal, and Taiwan's main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), whom Wang said Beijing was supporting, has strongly denounced the claims, as has Han Kuo-yu, its presidential candidate. Supporters of Han Kuo-Yu, presidential candidate for Taiwan's main opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party Credit: SAM YEH/AFP via Getty Images The KMT favours stronger trade ties with China although it maintains it will not do so at the cost of Taiwanese sovereignty. The island, which China claims as its own territory and threatens to annex, functions as a de facto independent nation. However, the Australian Security Intelligence Operation issued an earlier rare statement to say it took the claims of foreign interference seriously. Security agencies later uncovered a list of threats against Mr Wang on Christmas Eve, the Age reported. He was allegedly asked to recant his accusations by Alex Tsai, a senior KMT official, and directly threatened by a Chinese businessman. He was reportedly told that his family would be spared punishment if he backtracked on his spy claims. It is also claimed he was provided with a script and told to record a video message in which he would falsely claim that Taiwan's governing Democratic Progressive Party had bribed him to lie with "a large sum of money." Wang Liqiang is seeking asylum in Australia, where he has offered a trove of secrets about Chinese political interference Speaking to reporters in Taipei, Alex Tsai, the KMT official named in the story, confirmed he had spoken to Mr Wang, but denied threatening him or offering inducements. "It has nothing to do with Taiwan's elections," he stressed. "Wang Liqiang is not a spy. That is sure," he said, claiming that he had contacted Mr Wang to negotiate to clear the name of a Chinese businessman he had implicated in his espionage accusations. "Both are not Communist spies. Some people say that they're spies working to infiltrate Taiwan, but they've got the wrong person. It's a serious violation of human rights," he said. The DPP, which has repeatedly warned throughout the election campaign that China wants to impose authoritarian rule on Taiwan, expressed shock over the controversy and accused Mr Tsai of not revealing the whole truth. "This is an international scandal," Kuan Bi-ling, a DPP legislator said. In Australia, the federal police force told local media that it was "aware of threats made against a man currently residing in Australia." A spokesman added: "The AFP takes threats of this nature seriously and has commenced an investigation."
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| White House falsely claims 'Obama killed Gaddafi' to justify Soleimani strike Posted: 10 Jan 2020 12:28 PM PST  White House spokesperson Hogan Gidley didn't do a great job defending his employer on this one.As Democrats and some Republicans continue to criticize President Trump's decision to assassinate Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Gidley chimed in to compare it to the killings of several controversial leaders during former President Barack Obama's presidency. But as journalists and former Obama officials made clear, Gidley's comparisons weren't exactly accurate.> Obama didn't kill Gaddafi -- a militia from Misrata killed him. Democrats were pretty pissed about Awlaki. It was a whole thing. https://t.co/iw3LYSBui7> > — Blake News (@blakehounshell) January 10, 2020Yes, Obama did oversee the killing of Osama bin Laden, which was a widely praised move. But the "legality" of the U.S. killing of al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki was "a huge political issue" that even led Democrats to team up with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to challenge it, Lawfare's Susan Hennessey writes. And Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi? He was overthrown and killed by a Libyan mob.Gidley's tweet came just after Fox News aired a clip of Trump telling network host Laura Ingraham that "I think" Soleimani was planning to attack "four embassies" when he was assassinated, and "that it was probably going to be the embassy in Baghdad." This begs the question that The New York Times' Maggie Haberman later tweeted in response to Gidley: "Why not release the intel since POTUS keeps talking about it?"More stories from theweek.com Trump reportedly admitted impeachment played a big role in his Soleimani decision Rush's Neil Peart dies at age 67 Donald Trump is behaving like the guiltiest man alive
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| Mexican man slits throat at U.S. border after being denied entry Posted: 09 Jan 2020 02:34 PM PST  A Mexican man has died after slitting his own throat when he was denied entry to the U.S., according to Mexican officials.
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| Yes Iran Would Use Its Missiles Against America's Carriers in a War Posted: 09 Jan 2020 02:13 AM PST  Another reason to avoid a conflict.
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| Australian animals face extinction threat as bushfire toll mounts Posted: 09 Jan 2020 09:11 PM PST  When volunteer Sarah Price found a baby kangaroo frightened but miraculously alive in the pouch of its dying mother surrounded by the embers of Australia's bushfires, it seemed fitting to name him Chance. The furry pair had survived flames that have ripped through much of southeastern Australia, but the mother's organs later collapsed from acute stress -- making her one among the more than one billion animals estimated to have died in the crisis so far. Chance is slowly recovering, getting regular food and water and hiding out in a bag in a darkened room -- a rare success story amid a disaster that has shocked even volunteers accustomed to Australia's frequent bushfires and prolonged droughts.
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| A North Korean woman is under investigation after saving her 2 kids from a house fire — but not her portraits of the Kim family Posted: 09 Jan 2020 04:54 PM PST  Daily NK adds that the unnamed woman hasn't been able to care for her kids in the hospital because of the investigation.
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| Man sentenced for accidentally killing best friend at party Posted: 09 Jan 2020 11:28 AM PST |
| Young stars at the edge of the Milky Way appear to have come from 2 nearby galaxies. That means a galactic collision could happen sooner than predicted. Posted: 10 Jan 2020 05:02 AM PST  The arrival of new stars from other galaxies heralds a collision. But it could help the Milky Way "thrive," according to a physicist.
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| Russia's Putin oversees hypersonic missile test near Crimea Posted: 09 Jan 2020 03:54 AM PST  Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday oversaw military exercises from a naval vessel in the Black Sea near Crimea, including the test launch of a hypersonic air-launched Kinzhal missile, the Kremlin said. Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and has since built up military infrastructure on the peninsula. The first public outing of the Kinzhal occurred during a Red Square military parade in May 2018 and was one of several world premieres for Russian weapons.
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| Trump rages at Dems over war powers measure hours after vote Posted: 09 Jan 2020 05:39 PM PST  President Trump went after his Democratic critics at a raucous campaign rally hours after the House of Representatives passed a resolution that sought to limit his ability to take military action against Iran.
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| A brokered convention is more likely than Elizabeth Warren winning the nomination, FiveThirtyEight forecasts Posted: 10 Jan 2020 09:41 AM PST  The Democratic nominee is starting to take shape in FiveThirtyEight's 2020 vision.The data-driven news site gives former Vice President Joe Biden the best chance of locking down the 2020 Democratic nomination in its primary forecast that debuted Thursday. But things get more complicated beyond the top two candidates, with FiveThirtyEight predicting the Democratic National Committee could arrive at its convention without a nominee.Democratic candidates need to win more than half of pledged delegates ahead of the convention to land the presidential nomination. Biden has a two in five chance of earning that majority, FiveThirtyEight says, while Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) has a one in five chance.But the next most likely outcome isn't that prominent candidates Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) or former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg win the nomination. It's that no one gets a majority of delegates at all, FiveThirtyEight predicts. The chances of ending up with a contested convention are one in seven, FiveThirtyEight forecasts. Warren meanwhile gets a one in eight chance of locking up the nomination, Buttigieg gets 1 in 10, and all the other Democrats out there get a collective one in 40.Find more of FiveThirtyEight's primary predictions here.More stories from theweek.com Trump reportedly admitted impeachment played a big role in his Soleimani decision Rush's Neil Peart dies at age 67 Donald Trump is behaving like the guiltiest man alive
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| Revealed: The Secret Behind Iran's Sniper That Can Kill From 1,600 Meters Away Posted: 08 Jan 2020 09:01 PM PST  Tehran hurts its own reputation by constantly showing off fake weapons.
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| Israel hails 'breakthrough' towards laser air defence system Posted: 10 Jan 2020 02:47 AM PST  The Israeli defence ministry has hailed a "breakthrough" in the development of cheaper laser-based air defences, as tensions soar in the region after Iran hit US targets in retaliation for a high-profile assassination. The lasers, still under development, would be capable of intercepting "everything" fired at Israel, including long and medium range missiles, rockets, mortar rounds and drones, an official told AFP on Thursday, asking not to be identified. The new technology, which Israel hopes to test later this year, uses electricity to power the lasers, doing away with the need for stocks of munitions, the official said.
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| California Is Losing Young People and Texas Is Getting More of Them Posted: 09 Jan 2020 05:16 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- America's most populous state is losing its young people.California's youth population fell by more than 400,000 over the past decade to 8.9 million, largely due to a decline in immigrant inflows and a falling birth rate, according to the latest Census data. The population grew for all the state's older age-groups, highlighting the demographic challenge of an aging workforce in the coming generations.The decline in young people is a common trend in the U.S., where 30 states recorded a drop in the under-18 age bracket between 2010 and 2019, according to recently released data.Chalk up the decline in California primarily to people having fewer babies, said Stephen Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy, a research group. The state's birth rate is at the lowest in history. Other experts suggest falling foreign immigration and more out-migration to other states also are hurting California."There aren't enough kids in the pipeline to fill all the jobs of retiring people," Levy said. "We're going to need immigration and housing policies that pull people from around the world and the country into California."The state may increasingly struggle to lure and retain young people if the cost of living keeps rising in urban centers, including for housing, and traffic jams aren't addressed."California had a particularly bad end of decade due to smaller immigration, greater out-migration to other states and fewer births," said William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "Some of this is economically driven and not pre-ordained for the next decade, if immigration picks up and the job scenario and cost of living scenario improve."America's population trends have ramifications for politics, including influencing the redrawing of voter maps. California -- a solidly Democratic state which has never lost a U.S. House of Representatives seat -- is expected to lose one during the next reapportionment, and its declining youth population suggests it could shed additional spots in the future.At the other extreme, Texas led all states in growing the youth population, which rose to 7.4 million last year from 6.9 million in 2010.Texas has one of the highest birth rates in the U.S., along with strong in-migration from places like California and New York and rising immigration from Asia, putting the Lone Star state in a good position, said Lloyd Potter, the state demographer."We grew more than any other state, but half of our population change is from more births than deaths," Potter said.To contact the reporters on this story: Alex Tanzi in Washington at atanzi@bloomberg.net;Michael Sasso in Atlanta at msasso9@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Sarah McGregor at smcgregor5@bloomberg.net, Anita SharpeFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Man who killed US Marine sentenced to life in prison Posted: 09 Jan 2020 04:11 PM PST |
| Army to consider returning award to Matthew Golsteyn, soldier pardoned by Trump Posted: 09 Jan 2020 03:58 PM PST  President Trump intervened in the case of retired Maj. Matthew Golsteyn and two others. Golsteyn wants his special forces membership reinstated.
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| Pompeo Says Administration Is Not Sure ‘Where’ or ‘When’ Soleimani Planned ‘Imminent Attacks’ Posted: 10 Jan 2020 07:27 AM PST  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday that the Trump administration does not know "precisely when" or "precisely where" Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was planning to launch the "imminent attacks" against U.S. assets that the administration cited as justification for the airstrike that killed him last week."There is no doubt that there were a series of imminent attacks being plotted by Qasem Soleimani," Pompeo told Fox News. "We don't know precisely when, and we don't know precisely where, but it was real."The U.S. launched an airstrike in Baghdad on January 3 that killed Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's elite Quds Force.U.S. officials said they believed Soleimani had been plotting "imminent attacks" on U.S. facilities in the surrounding region that could have killed hundreds of Americans, though multiple reports citing senior diplomatic and military officials have contradicted the claim that an imminent threat had emerged in the days before the airstrike."I don't think there's any doubt that Soleimani had intentions not only to take action against our forces, our diplomats in Iraq but in other countries around the region and world as well," Pompeo said.Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle expressed outrage after a briefing on the airstrike delivered Wednesday by Pompeo and other officials. Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah led the charge, calling it "the worst" military briefing he's ever attended before backtracking on Thursday. Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky joined Lee in criticizing Pompeo and other intelligence officials for refusing to divulge more information about what prompted the strike and for counseling lawmaker against publicly debating the merits of further escalation."I thought we did a dynamite job," Pompeo said. "We did our level best to present them with all the facts that we could in that setting.""We shared an awful lot with them yesterday," the secretary of state added. "I think members of Congress get frustrated with this sometimes."
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| The 7 Best Web Browsers for Every Kind of Netizen Posted: 10 Jan 2020 12:54 PM PST |
| Elizabeth Warren: 'I never wash my face' Posted: 09 Jan 2020 09:04 AM PST  Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) might want to consider a big, structural change to her skincare routine.Sure, the 2020 candidate discussed health care policy, the ongoing Iran crisis, and student loan debt in an interview with Cosmopolitan published Thursday. But one of the most standout revelations stemmed from a signature Cosmo question: "What's your skincare routine?""Pond's Moisturizer," Warren concisely responded. "Every morning, every night. And I never wash my face."> Wait. WHAT??! https://t.co/piedy2An49 pic.twitter.com/8FYucV9S8Y> > — Eugene Scott (@Eugene_Scott) January 9, 2020Warren went on to explain she didn't exactly get her tips from Cosmo's pages, but rather from "a much older cousin named Tootsie:"> Years ago, I was, I guess probably somewhere in my 20s, and we're at a big family reunion. And Tootsie was beautiful. I looked over at her, and I said, "Toots, how do you have such gorgeous skin?" She said, "Pond's Moisturizer every morning, every night, and never wash your face." So from Tootsie to me to you.Find Warren's whole interview with Cosmopolitan here.More stories from theweek.com Trump reportedly admitted impeachment played a big role in his Soleimani decision Rush's Neil Peart dies at age 67 Donald Trump is behaving like the guiltiest man alive
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| Canadians would back Prince Harry as governor general: poll Posted: 10 Jan 2020 12:42 PM PST  A majority of Canadians would support making Britain's Prince Harry the country's next governor general, according to a poll published Friday as his wife, Meghan, returned to Canada. Sixty-one percent of the Canadians polled said they would support having Harry replace current governor general Julie Payette when her term expires, the National Post said. Payette, a former astronaut, was named to the post in 2017.
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